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About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I study the History of Biblical Interpretation, which includes Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My interests are religion, politics, TV, movies, and reading.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Extremely Scattered Ramblings on Accountability to God

This is another post that draws from Brian Morley’s Mapping Apologetics.
It is not my official review, though. For my official review, I’ll
probably make a few comments, then link to my posts about the book.

Although this particular post is not my official review, it will talk
about a central theme in Morley’s book: the question of whether, when,
and how human beings are responsible to God. With so many religious and
philosophical options out there, are people actually accountable to the
God of the Bible? Can a loving and just God legitimately judge people
over whether they believe in him and follow his standards? Is there
even enough evidence that the biblical God is real?

Romans 1:18-21 is relevant to this topic. It states (in the KJV):
“(18)For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness; (19) Because that which may be known of God is manifest
in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. (20) For the invisible
things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and
Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (21) Because that, when they
knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened.”

A question that is discussed in Morley’s book is what exactly this
passage means. In what way does God’s creation make people responsible
for believing in God, while making disbelief in God inexcusable?

Christian apologists have different ideas about this. Alvin
Plantinga believes that human beings have within themselves some sense
of the divine, and that this sense can be activated when they are
beholding the beauty and the majesty of God’s creation. William Lane
Craig, however, thinks that Paul is saying that one can look at creation
and infer or reason from it that there is a God. Craig notes that
Romans 1:18-21 appears to be based on Wisdom of Solomon 13:1-9, and that
there “inferential thinking is clearly in view” (Morley’s words on page
232, in discussing Craig’s view). Craig emphasizes the cosmological
and the teleological arguments for the existence of God, and a key asset
to Morley’s book is his description of Craig’s arguments against those
who try to account for the beginning and order of the universe (if they
acknowledge those things) apart from God.

I do not know or remember how a presuppositionalist apologist would
interpret Romans 1. Something that I like about presuppositionalists is
that they argue that facts by themselves cannot communicate a Christian
or theistic message, for different people can interpret facts in
different ways, based on their presuppositions. Yet,
presuppositionalists still believe that people are responsible before
God. Why?

One reason is that, for presuppositionalists, rationality is not
possible without the Reformed God and a belief in him. One has a
choice, for many presuppositionalists: either one believes in the
Reformed God, or one has no basis at all for being rational. That, for
them, is a reason to believe in the Reformed God! Morley repeats this
throughout the book in discussing presuppositonalists and other
apologists’ interaction with their views, and I still do not entirely
understand this claim. I get that they are saying that God and a belief
in God provide a sense of order and interrelationship among facts that a
non-theistic belief in chance does not—-that a belief in the Reformed
God who plans everything that exists and happens places facts into a
story or a coherent system, both of which are essential to rationality.
I guess that my problem is that I do not think that belief in the
Reformed God is necessary for a person to be rational or to notice order
or interconnections. Perhaps one could appeal to the existence of the
Reformed God—-or something or someone supernatural—-to account for why
the cosmos is orderly or facts are interconnected, but one can notice
those things without believing in a Reformed God, without having that
particular presupposition. Moreover, I would question that God has to
cause every single thing for there to be rationality; God may cause
things, but every single thing? Presuppositionalist Cornelius Van Til
acknowledged that non-believers can be rational, but he contends that
they are ripping off rationality from Reformed Christianity.

Writing out this view makes presuppositionalism appear a little bit
more sensible to me than it did when I read about it; still, there is
something missing, either in the view, or in my understanding of it.
Some may read my comments and think that I am saying that
presuppositionalists argue that God needed to create the universe for it
to be rational and orderly, but that is not what I am saying.
Presuppositionalists seem to me to be on the opposite end of the
spectrum from those who employ the cosmological and teleological
arguments for God’s existence—-though Morley does present exceptions,
such as John Frame. Rather, what presuppositionalists seem to be saying
is that, in order to have any basis to be rational and to see the
universe as an orderly place with interconnections, one has to believe
in a God who consciously and with purpose plans everything in it. Apart
from a belief in God, you have a bunch of bare facts that lack purpose,
coherence, or interconnection. Clear as mud?

I should note, before I go on to the next reason that some
presuppositionalists believe people are accountable to God, that
presuppositionalists are not the only ones who think that a bare fact by
itself does not communicate the Christian message or theism. Morley
talks about a division among the Christian apologists who appeal to
arguments and evidence—-the types who are not on the same side as
presuppositionalists. Some believe that Christian apologists can
legitimately make the conventional classic apologetic arguments for
Jesus’ resurrection, and that can win people to faith; others, by
contrast, believe that apologists should argue for the existence of God
first and present miracles as a possibility, then make the arguments for
Jesus’ resurrection. The latter contend that Jesus’ resurrection by
itself does not prove the truth of Christianity, that, without the
context provided by arguments for the existence of God, one could
understandably see Jesus’ resurrection as a fluke. I do appreciate this
point, for it does get on my nerves when certain apologists act as if
their “evidence” for the resurrection of Jesus validates all of
Christianity—-some (not all) go so far as to say that, because Jesus
believed in biblical inerrancy and rose from the dead, that means
biblical inerrancy is true. Personally, I do not think that the Bible’s
problems vanish because people may have found an empty tomb or seen a
vision. What I would ask is what the bridge would be between the
cosmological and teleological arguments and the arguments for Jesus’
resurrection. More than one thinker discussed in the book acknowledges
that the cosmological and teleological arguments do not demonstrate the
existence of the Christian God, specifically, but just a God.

Back, though, to why presuppositionalists think that we are
accountable before God. Greg Bahnsen, as I understood him, said that
people have some intuitive sense that the Bible is true when they hear
it, even though that sense has been marred by sin. I used that in
witnessing to a skeptic years ago: “The Bible is true, and you know it
is true.” He thought I was being condescending and dismissive of his
arguments for skepticism, and I was. That, by the way, leads me to
raise another important issue that comes up in Morley’s book. For
presuppositionalists, we cannot have a situation in which people sit
back and evaluate evidence for Christianity, then decide for themselves
whether it is true, as if they are the king or queen. Rather, the
situation is that people are confronted with the truth of God’s word,
and they either submit or rebel! If they rebel, then they are sinning
and deserve divine wrath! John Warwick Montgomery is not a
presuppositionalist—-he is one of those apologists who thinks that facts
can point to Christianity or theism—-but he has a similar insight to
the presuppositionalists here, only it is consistent with his
evidentialist approach: facts speak, whereas interpretations can easily
become subject to self-serving bias, and so people need to be
accountable to facts. Presuppositionalists and Montgomery both want to
take humans off the throne so that they will be subject to God, but they
differ on what approach is conducive to that.

I want to say something else before I close. A lot of times,
Christian apologists seem to think that those who do not believe in
Christianity are trying to avoid being accountable to God—-that their
rejection of God is primarily for moral or spiritual reasons, whereas
intellectual reasons are a mere cloak. There may be something to that,
depending on the case: I don’t believe it is true of everyone,
especially those who wanted to be Christian but left the faith because
their doubt became unbelief. In any case, I think that blaming atheists
or non-believers for their unbelief splashes cold water on them and
does little to attract them to God. Rather than just saying, “Oh,
you’re just being rebellious,” why not emphasize the love of God, and
even demonstrate the love of God rather than being obsessed with winning
debates? There were some apologists in Morley’s book who advocated a
compassionate approach—-one of them appealed to Paul Vitz’s study about
how many prominent atheists may have had absent fathers (which I am not
saying is true) and said that Christians should keep that in mind in
reaching out to atheists; another said that Christianity meets the needs
of the human heart. I remember an Adventist meeting where the preacher
said that God is not one to be afraid of, but one to be a friend of.
Why not give atheists bread, instead of a stone (Matthew 7:9)? But
doesn’t Paul splash cold water on people in Romans 1, when he says that
people are without excuse when it comes to their responsibility to
worship God? Maybe, but he does not leave his message there; he goes on
to proclaim the love and grace of God.

UPDATE: This is not my official review, but I should probably mention
that I received this book as a complimentary review copy from
Intervarsity Press, in exchange for an honest review.